


walls, windows and a mystery

by jemejem



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: 'I came home after 3 months of travel to find you squatting in my house', Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Giveaway fic, Impromptu Surgery, M/M, Neil is an idiot and Andrew is an exy player, Prompt Fic, Scars, Serious Injuries, The Sappiest Ending, because I am the worst, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 11:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21445456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemejem/pseuds/jemejem
Summary: Andrew arrives home from three months of dealing with international flights, Kevin and Exy bullshit, only to find his new place with a little more than walls and windows.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 31
Kudos: 392





	walls, windows and a mystery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marjelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marjelle/gifts).

Andrew rolled his head around continuously until he felt the satisfying cracks in his spine, like a zip coming undone: He hated flying, had never learned to put up with it, and being short as fuck didn’t make it any more tolerable. 

To make matters worse, Andrew wasn’t stood outside of his familiar apartment complex, but rather, a new and daunting investment he’d never thought he’d achieve. 

A house. 

Two bedrooms, an ensuite bathroom to the master bedroom, a wrap-around porch and a fortified garage were appealing, sure, but what had truly attracted Andrew to the place was its reinforced windows, the locks on every door, and the security system that didn’t add too much to the deposit. Money wasn’t truly an issue, but Andrew preferred to be modest. His team wouldn’t dare kick him off, but that didn’t mean Andrew was stupid enough to assume he’d always have a reliable income. 

It was nothing like the other homes he’d inhabited. California heralded only decrepit foster homes, with sun-bleached paint and cracked pavements and secrets under the wooden floorboards. Tilda’s house had been dank and miserable and Andrew had been too wrapped up in Aaron’s misery to notice his surroundings. The house in Columbia—of which Andrew had finally paid off three years ago—was the closest thing to a home he’d ever had, but his time with his cousin and his brother was tainted by bad decisions at clubs and court-mandated medication. 

Then there were the dormitories at college. Then apartment after apartment as he moved around from team to team, trying different cities and hating each of them. 

Denver was where he’d settled because he didn’t know anyone from college there and the coach was oddly tolerant of his prickliness. She knew he was worth the lack of engagement: their team was running at the Houston Siren’s heels with his help. It was only a matter of time till Andrew blocked Kevin’s miserable shots enough to win the league. 

That was this house in front of him: his opportunity to settle. To have a domestic life that he’d always looked at and assumed he didn’t deserve. 

He sighed. Betsy would slap him over the back of his head for heading back down that path of self-deprecation. His journey to stability was long and treacherous but at least he knew his own worth now. 

He glanced back to the van he’d booked from the airport. It was loaded up with essentials to tide him over for the week, when he could lug the rest of it from storage over to the suburbs. He took his suitcase and backpack to the front door and jostled his new set of keys, learning the way they sounded and felt. The key slid in too easily seeing as Andrew hadn’t come by the place for three months. He shoved the door inwards and stepped inside. 

It was empty and the stillness pervasive, but warmer than expected. Andrew hoped that whoever was squatting in his house wasn’t actually dumb enough to light the fireplace. He hated dealing with idiots. 

He put his suitcase down in the hall and canvased the place from head to toe. The bedrooms and bathrooms looked untouched and Andrew saw no scuffs in the dust that’d settled on the living room floorboards. Only when he walked into the laundry, a tiny room tucked under the staircase that was mostly a buffer for the back porch, did he find what he was looking for. 

A sleeping roll. Unmade and worn thin, but left out for anyone to see on the laundry floor. The lock on the window was loose, a small scuff in the paint job probably from an errant boot. 

Andrew sighed. Whoever was hiding out in his house was only using it as shelter from wintry cold, and so they wouldn’t risk being seen coming and going in broad daylight. That gave Andrew plenty of time to unload the van, lugging his mattress up the stairs and into his room, and unpacking his suitcases back into his wardrobes. Most of it was formal wear he had to wear for appearances at the end of almost every week for the three months Andrew had been gone for the international league. He didn’t want to wear a suit for the rest of the damned year. 

Once he’d parked the van far enough away to avoid suspicion, he settled on top of his staircase with his old knives tucked into his sleeves, one balanced precariously on his fingertips. 

It was a long while till the rat appeared. Luckily—or unluckily—for him, Andrew was incredibly practised in stillness and patience. He was alert when he heard the window being shoved open, already to his feet when the thud of a body falling through shook the walls of his house. The flurry of curses that came from the idiot’s mouth were definitely a low enough baritone to suggest it was a male, but the window was too small and the thud of his body hitting the ground too light to be anyone much taller than Andrew was. 

He hoped, distantly, that the man didn’t have a gun on him. He crept for the door handle, counted to three, and wretched it open. 

“Oh, fucking Christ,” the man snapped, hands shaking and bloodied. “The night I intend on ditching this place. The night they find me and almost wedge a crowbar between my ribs. That just  _ has  _ to be the one night I got made.” He glanced at the knife in Andrew’s hand and slumped against the washing machine. “Fine. Just do it. It’s been 17 years. I’m tired.”

Andrew lowered the knife. “When you say that they ‘almost’ wedged a crowbar between your ribs, how far did they get?”

The man hissed as he rose his arm. “I haven’t been able to look.”

“Stay there,” Andrew demanded, pacing back with his knife pointed at the man. It was too dark to distinguish his exact appearance, but his eyes were a shade of blue so hauntingly pale that they almost glowed in the dark. “I’m going to get supplies.”

“Does it look like I can go anywhere?” He bit out, sliding to the floor. 

Andrew returned with his measly first-aid kit, though some would consider it more extensive than most. The man was crumpled on the floor but he was still breathing, albeit in an irregular and heavy fashion. Andrew flicked on the light and dropped to his knees in front of the man. When he made no show of being cooperative, Andrew used his knife to cut away the bedraggled remnants of his clothing. 

“Wait—“ he started, but it was too late. 

Andrew ignored the scars, though it twinged something in his chest, a curiosity borne of familiarity. Instead he focused on the man’s injuries. The worst was definitely a deep cut to his side, which was difficult to distinguish when it was still oozing blood everywhere. The stab wound near his hip wasn’t too bad, but he still needed stitches. 

“Bag,” the man panted, brown hair plastered to his forehead. It was brassy at the roots, the shitty dye faded enough to reveal the reddish undertones. Andrew obediently dragged over his bag whilst his other hand staunched the bloodflow, watching as he drew out a bottle of crappy liquor. 

“Is this really the time?” Andrew remarked. 

“I’m not going to hospital,” he flicked off the cap. “This is the only way that its tolerable.”

“You won’t be able to reach.”

He struggled against Andrew’s hands, reaching for his own kit that poked out of the ratty duffel. “I can try.” 

Andrew pinned his shoulders against the small sink cabinet and snatched the kit from the man’s hands. He had never done something like this before, but adrenaline was a good teacher and his boredom-driven college self had perused enough of Aaron’s surgical specialisation anatomy books to understand the basic risks. The man watched in inebriated awe as Andrew threaded the needle and bent over his ribcage, setting the point to his skin. 

“First you’re not even phased by the scars,” he muttered, words slurred. “Then you’re sewing me up in your goddamned laundry. You aren’t even gonna ask why?”

“If I did, I’d have to ask why the hell you’ve been squatting in my house for however long you decided was a good time, and I don’t think it’s safe to approach that when I have a needle in your skin.”

“Touché.” The man sighed, then winced, nearly dislodging Andrew’s hand. “Fucking  _ ouch. _ ”

“Sorry,” Andrew remarked. “Should I just pull some local anaesthetic out of my ass, too?”

He grumbled, head beginning to droop downwards as Andrew finished up. He wasn’t coherent but he was still alive, and that was all Andrew could really ask for. He didn’t need another corpse in his bedroom, or all the fiddly police involvement that came with it. He cleaned the man the best that he could and carried him out of the laundry—he was definitely malnourished—to lay him on his mattress. Andrew knew he wouldn’t sleep with a stranger under his roof, and he found it rather tolerable to stay awake, with all the jet-lag. He sat in the corner of his bedroom with a book and made sure he could always hear the man’s breathing. 

The sun rose too quickly: the man awoke too fast. It was a shame: Andrew had been enjoying the peace. 

As expected, the man quickly scrambled to his feet in a blind panic, blinking at Andrew where he was sat against the wall. “What the fuck?”

“No ‘thank you’? You smell like shit but I still let you sleep on my mattress.” Andrew had been considering getting a new one, anyway. 

The man looked around the room—probably for his bag—as he patted himself down—probably for his knives. When he conceded that Andrew had stripped him bare of his belongings, his mouth twisted into a snarl. 

Andrew stood. “Since you were clearly too out of it to remember, I found you sprawled on your laundry floor, patched you up and watched over you as you slept.”

He blinked. “ _ Why?”  _

Andrew shrugged. “Out of the goodness of my own heart?”

The man snorted derisively. “I thought I recognised you. Andrew Minyard. Kevin Day’s personal guard dog.” He bared his teeth. “Did he ever tell you about me?”

Andrew’s chest constricted at Kevin’s mention. He brushed it off: the guy clearly knew what Exy was, for him know both of those names, and was trying to make a claim to fame. Andrew hadn’t the time for such idiocy, so he bent down to pick his book up again. “Since you’re so reluctant to leave, I might just drop the cops a call.”

“No—“ he swallowed uneasily. “Please don’t. I’ll leave. I stay stupid shit when I’m in shock or angry. Ignore me.”

“Angry.” Andrew repeated.

“At myself,” he muttered, shoulders curling inwards as he became introspective. “For doing something so inexplicably stupid.”

“You are truly pathetic,” Andrew decided. “Stay there.” 

His head jerked up. “What?” 

“Stay where you are. I’m getting your things. Your stitches will snap if you so much as bend the wrong way, alright? Sit the fuck down.”

“I’m leaving,” he announced. 

Andrew upper-cut him in the stomach: he keeled over, gasping, with his hands curled against his ribs like that could ease the ache. He collapsed back onto the mattress and looked up to Andrew, gritting his jaw so hard Andrew could hear his molars grinding together. 

“Fuck you,” he rasped. The homeless man Andrew’d found squatting in his home was rather eloquent, it seemed. 

Andrew shrugged, marching out of his room and down the hall to clean up the mess in the laundry. The blood and medical supplies could be dealt with later: Andrew could tell that this bag was the man’s crutch. Andrew knew all too well what it was like at rock bottom. He zipped up the thread-bare duffel and carried it up the stairs. 

Surprisingly—or, perhaps not—the man was still curled in on himself on the mattress. 

Andrew knelt in front of him. “Last night you said you were tired. Of what, I’m going to assume is your life in general.” He watched the man grab the bag by its straps, quivering fingers going straight for the zip. Andrew put his hand over the man’s wrist. “Listen to me.”

“You don’t understand,” he insisted.

“Maybe I don’t. Maybe I do.” He tilted the man’s chin up slowly with his knuckle. “Stand your ground and fight back against whatever is nipping at your heels, and you’ll have my support. Do you understand? This is your way out.”

“Why?” He demanded. “What kind of fuckery have you been through to think this is a rational idea?”

Andrew stood up and paced back, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his slacks. “Don’t ask questions you don’t actually want the answers for.”

“I’m serious,” he said, softly-spoken and  _ weary.  _ The shadows under his eyes were more like ink-smudge tattoos than the average man’s exhaustion. “Why?”

Andrew shrugged. He wasn’t quite sure why himself, so he just said, “I need something to put in the guest room.”

It took the man a moment, a moment of prolonged staring at his gnarled knuckles, a moment of infinite silence. When he looked up, Andrew knew that he’d lost the battle against himself. 

“I’m Neil,” he said. 

“Andrew.” Andrew returned. “Though I guess you already knew that.” 

And if Andrew truly squinted, truly looked hard enough, he’d see the twitch of Neil’s lips, glancing upwards for merely a split second in time. 

It was a good thing he wasn’t wearing his glasses: it was far too early in the morning to be falling in love. 

**Author's Note:**

> the last giveaway prompt for my aftg remix guesses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for sig66 who gave me a few meet ugly prompts and told me 2 run with it, i hope u liked it <<<333


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